Data Security

The U.S. is gearing up for students to return to school, and although there’s still plenty of apprehension around how the new strain of COVID-19 will impact the education system and in-person learning, parents are making all the necessary purchases to get their kids the supplies they need. This annual influx of back-to-school (BTS) shopping…

Responsible marketing delivers hard commercial returns by building trust with customers who are more worried than ever about their data and privacy. It's well established that winning and retaining customer loyalty comprises multiple elements, possibly the most important of which is trust. The 2020 Trust Barometer from Edelman says trust is the make-or-break difference for…

Internet fraudsters are on the prowl more than ever before due to the COVID-19 e-commerce boom. Consider that by mid-March 2020, online shopping in the U.S. surged 35 percent from 2019 levels, and card-not-present spending grew 30 percent in the last quarter of 2020, primarily driven by retail spending, as reported in Visa’s Q1 earnings. Cybercriminals…

Credential stuffing attacks — in which hackers use credentials exposed in prior breaches to attack new sites — are soaring, with 193 billion documented incidents globally in 2020. The pandemic is a primary driver behind this increase; the abrupt shift to remote work, creation of new online accounts, and increased reliance on e-commerce all provided…

On April 20, leading cybersecurity and compliance firm A-LIGN released the 2021 Compliance Benchmark Report, a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity benchmark survey that lets organizations compare seven aspects of their compliance programs to peers by industry, by revenue, and by employee size. The report analyzes survey results from over 200 cybersecurity, internal audit, and other professionals about…

Thousands of companies today, large and small, are realizing the importance of building trust and giving customers a voice through functions such as customer consent and preference management. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, as well as customer backlash related to poor customer experiences, has forced much of this shifting environment for brands today. Why…

The consumer data privacy topic may feel like a slow rolling, deep water wave, far offshore without imminent threat, but in reality, there are many waves rapidly gaining in size and speed, and they’re hitting all at once. The first ripples started several years ago in the European Union with an abstract-sounding acronym “GDPR” and…

As e-commerce grows, retailers continue to be a prime target for cyber attacks due to the higher volumes of personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card information (PCI) being handled. This data can be sold, used and exploited by malicious actors for potential financial or personal gain. With retail sales fluctuating year-over-year, customer trust and…

Kroger Co. said in a statement Friday that personal data, including Social Security numbers of some of its pharmacy and clinic customers, may have been stolen in the hack of a third-party vendor’s file-transfer service. The third-party vendor, Accellion, was used by Kroger as well as many other companies for secure third-party file transfers. Accellion notified Kroger that…

A recent survey revealed that more than half of all consumers (56 percent) plan to continue shopping primarily online post-pandemic, compared to just 5 percent who say they will shop only in-person afterward. In fact, data showed that half as many people shopped inside stores last Black Friday compared to 2019, while, in stark contrast,…